Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Yet another guest writer. This time a big thank you to Roger Butcher (Ramone) who was for many years the only one doing any social media for the club.This is his review on the 2018 -19 season taken from the Tooting Daily Prss web site

The new management team of Ashley Bosah and Cornelius Nwadialor. Photo by Sam Conquest

After the disappointment of relegation last year, the green shoots of optimism about the new season are beginning to emerge. Roger Butcher looks forward to the new season at Tooting & Mitcham United FC.

It seems, that no matter how bad things have been, most football supporters approach a brand new season with a renewed confidence, no matter how misplaced!
Over the summer, the club parted ways with manager Frank Wilson after three seasons of extremes! No mid-table mediocrity with Wilson! It seems to have been an amiable split, and certainly the supporters don’t have a bad word to say about Frank. But finishing bottom of the table normally means that the manager will be shown the door, and so it was with Tooting.
The new man at the helm is well known at Tooting & Mitcham – Ashley Bosah. He has been around the club for many years in a number of roles – predominantly working with the youth set up, and more recently he was to be seen in the dugout alongside Frank Wilson. It goes without saying that we wish him the best of luck and hope he gets off to a good start. He will be assisted by a new face at Tooting – Cornelius Nwadialor.
The new management team will be taking the team into unknown territory as we have been relegated to a newly formed division – the Isthmian South Central. It is still sponsored by Bostik, but due to the new regionalisation of the leagues, we will be playing against teams from areas that we haven’t been to for many years. The South Central Division is at Step 4 of the non-league pyramid – that same level in which we won the league just 2 seasons ago. So despite the new name and a few new opponents, this league shouldn’t hold too many fears for us.
There are generally a lot more comings and goings of players over the summer in the non-league game compared to professional teams, but so far the new management team have done well to keep the bulk of last season’s squad. Although the team finished bottom, I still think that having a continuity of players is beneficial to making a good start to the season. There still seems to be a good spirit amongst the players despite the trials and tribulations of last season. Our biggest loss may be Chace O’Neill who has joined a club in the Bostik Premier division after 3 seasons with us in which he had some magnificent performances.
Also departing is Mike Dixon whose goals in the 2nd half of the championship season propelled us over the line in the title race with Dorking Wanderers. Injuries blighted his campaign last season, but he is another one who will be playing in the Bostik Premier next season.
As for new players, it’s difficult to say this early in the season. Clubs at our level very rarely have players on contracts, and so players are free to move clubs right up until the first game of the season. We have had 5 friendly matches so far which has featured quite a few players. Some from last season’s team, some from the youth team and some new faces from other teams. How the final squad will shape up is not clear yet, as the new manager still has a couple of weeks to weigh up his options.
The results in the pre-season friendly games are really inconsequential but Elijah Simpson may have staked an early claim for a 1st team spot with 4 goals in our 6-1 win over Redhill. Other results so far include a 2-1 win over Whyteleafe, a 1-1 draw away at Staines and a couple of defeats at the hands of Merstham and Greenwich Borough.
As for the new season, it is difficult to work out who will be the teams to look out for as due to the reorganisation of the leagues, there are quite a few teams who were in different leagues last season, such as the Southern League. I suppose Hayes & Yeading will be a force, as they were playing in the Conference as recently as 2012. At the other end of the scale is Westfield, who play near Guildford, and who are playing their first season at this level having won the Combined Counties League last season with an impressive 106 points.
Tooting embark on the new campaign away to Northwood on 11th August and have their first home game against Marlow on 18th August. If you can’t wait till then to get your football fix, there is one remaining friendly against Horsham on 4th August. Why not come down and enjoy a bit of late summer football?
And don’t forget that the FA Cup begins for clubs at our level in August. We start in the preliminary round and will have a home tie against Redhill or Horley, depending on who wins their tie a week previously.
Upcoming Home Fixtures (all at 3pm):
•Horsham (Pre Season Friendly) – Sat 4th August
•Marlow – Sat 18th August
•Redhill or Horley Town (FA Cup) – Sat 25th August
•Chipstead – Bank Holiday Monday 28th August

Monday, July 23, 2018

Another Guest Writer. This time Sir Timothy Megone. King of The Bog End.

It's fair too say that Tim is one of the "Characters" over at Tooting and Mitcham. When I say "Characters", I mean nutcase.

I don’t go along with the Fifth Columnists and the Shabby Naysayers who attributed England’s World Cup progress to a horny cocktail of good fortune and sub-standard opposition. Or the general idea that we are light years away from the glittering citadels that bestride international football.
England have fucked it up in the past against supposed village level opposition and there was no prospect of that on this occasion (or at least there shouldn’t have been against Tunisia if the officials had turned up in the first half). Sweden and Colombia were genuinely dangerous opponents that we sent packing (albeit after a decidedly wobbly finish against the latter) and we weren’t far off toppling Croatia, who could easily have won the whole thing.
If you take away the Big Potatoes of the tournament – France, Belgium, Croatia and Brazil – you’re left with a chasing pack of spritely whippersnappers and plucky fuckers (Mexico, Switzerland) and stumbling giants (Germany and Argentina) without a lot to choose between them, and England somewhere near the front of the perky pretender brigade.
I remain firmly convinced that if Mikhail Antonio (injured and out of favour, but immortalized by his Tooting and Mitcham past and morally still black and white all the way) had been on board in Russia, things would have been different and the 52 year drout ended once and for all.
England could also do with a hefty improvement in the musical accompaniment department, starting by ditching the forelock tugging dirge that masquerades as a national anthem. That’s the song they play before Northern Ireland matches where our Lord and Saviour is requested to rescue an elderly German woman from who knows what – the perils of silly hats at Ascot? Perhaps we could have a song about England instead?
Steel Eye Span’s (or is it Spam, as in fritter) ‘All Around My Hat’ appears to fit the bill. Blown away by the orgasmic musical swirl, I never really listened to the lyrics, but educated guesswork and wishful thinking tell me that it deals with Morris dancing and pagan rituals in the Forest of Dean, garnished with assorted Village Idiot rites of passage (cheese rolling, shin-kicking and stinging nettle eating competitions, with Countryfile’s John Craven gazing lovingly from afar). Does it for me.

England’s lusty surge to the World Cup semi-final and the beer-soaked frenzy that went with it brought back memories of 1990, when people who normally couldn’t give a shit about football steamed in on the act, casting off their shackles and running amok through fields, forests, bus shelters and discos across the realm – while those of us who’d suffered the Three Lions’ constipated flounderings for years wondered what the fuck was going on.
My daughter is one of the new breed of steely eyed zealots, which is puzzling when you consider her footballing past with Tooting and Mitcham: - she strolled onto the scene over a decade ago to the riotous splendour of Richard Cadette’s fantastic but fragile and ultimately failed promotion chasing team. It featured the rampaging heroics of ‘Super Johnny’ Hastings (with his six-goal haul against Kentish tunnel fuckers Ashford Town), which put Harry Kane’s recent exploits in the shade.
All of which failed to impress her and she turned her back on the One True Cause after a couple of years’ failed indoctrination from the Bog End priesthood. But if the devil-may-care antics of Jordan Pickford and Harry Maguire are enough to entice her back to Tooting’s shrivelling fan base, then that will do me fine.

I’m still struggling to cope with the passing of another World Cup. Despite missing more bits than I would have wanted (Serbia v Switzerland for starters), I probably enjoyed this one more than any that I can remember.
As a defender of righteousness and justice across the globe, my default position has always been to stand by the arbiters of law and order, so it will come as no surprise that I found the general standard of refereeing pretty handy, especially compared with the crap that we put up with in the 1990’s.
Perversely, amongst the low lights was the introduction of VAR, with frequently questionable reviews, followed by massive delays and sealed with often shitty decisions, Iran’s dodgy penalty against Portugal being a case in point, but one that ultimately didn’t change anything. The one that stole the show – because it affected the course of the game and quite possibly the outcome - was the ludicrous penalty awarded to France in the final against Croatia.
Rio Ferdinand defended the new system by bleating something about it making the game more entertaining. Possibly, but you could achieve roughly the same effect by bringing on a bunch of fire quaffing jugglers or inviting Sepp Blatter and the Pope to duel naked in a giant vat of custard for 90 minutes. Whether you’d get footballing justice is another matter.
I think the real problem may not be the technology itself but the longstanding obsession amongst officialdom with pointing to the spot every time the ball flies within farting distance of a fingernail anywhere in the vicinity of the penalty area.
I’m looking forward next season to seeing the non-league version of this, especially at the fourth tier where Tooting and Mitcham will be scrapping for glory with a variety of pig farms, several of them Middlesex, Surrey and Berks and Bucks outposts - set for deserved destruction if the Heathrow empire megalomaniacs have their way.
The technology won’t have been invented yet, so slow motion replays will presumably be enacted by amateur thespians from a local drama group pissing about with a beach ball in the club bar. A panel of experts, ideally myself, will mete out justice and retribution and the flame of truth and freedom will burn brightly and destroy all in its path.

Cheers Tim.....

I nicked all of this of his Facebook page with his permission I may add....

Thursday, July 5, 2018

I've now one of the committee members of the Tooting and Mitcham United Supporters Club(T&MUFSC) . So along with Charlie T, Dave Irons and Peter W we are all going to get the Supporters club a bit of a boost. We are aiming to do a big recruitment drive ready for next season, hoping to raise funds for various projects and to also raise the profile of the club / team through social media etc.We now even have a Twitter account so please follow @tamufscThe account is being run by Peter Woodhouse so expect it to be far more professional than any of the rubbish I regularly put out

Also we are aiming to get new badges etc. done and possibly other T&MUFSC branded items , pens, mouse pads, gimp masks etc.

We've also had a couple of successful get together's and there are quite a few now willing to help spread the word about the "Sleeping Giants of South London Football" If you can help in any way shape or form, please get in contact and help spread the word. The next one will be held on Tuesday 17th July at 7:30pm when the 1st team are playing Merstham on the back 3G pitch. I'll have membership forms and other odds and sods to give outI've also now spoke to the wonderful Tim Megone and asked him to be a guest writer on here. He man is a legend over at Tooting and Mitcham and is one of our more vocal supporters. He is of course totally mental and his view of the world in general needs to be shared with a far wider audience.

The only down side to this is that technology and Timmy are still miles apart so I will have to keep hassling him for stuff.... But I promise it will be worth it.

Just like the Freemasons, obliviously I can't tell you all the secret rituals and initiation ceremonies that I had to go through to become a committee member expect to say I was told by Dave Irons to stand outside the main gates facing the A217 with my trousers and underpants around my knees with my genitalia on full display while sticking my tongue out for 5 minutes.When I asked if this was part of the initiation Dave said no... He just didn't like the bloke working in the garage opposite.